Favorite Childhood Books

Mary and Eric selected their favorite childhood books for a Children's Book Week
program conducted by the Kaubisch Memorial Public Library. Library's Director Doris Ann Norris explains:

"Letters from the Youth Services Department of the Kaubisch Memorial
Public Library in Fostoria, OH were sent to dozens of local officials,
celebrities including authors and others. This was for Children's Book
Week which was celebrated from November 12 through the 18th. These
people were asked to select a favorite book from childhood, why it was
their favorite and how much reading has meant in their lives and
careers. Approximately 40 letters were received including one from Mr.
Rogers and a number of authors, both of children's and adult books."

Eric's Favorite: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

For years I've named Kenneth Grahame's THE WIND IN
THE WILLOWS as my favorite book. My grandmother read to me
the adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad and I
remember those evenings spent sitting and listening
beside the rocking chair in her living room as my
introduction to the enchantment of the written word. Our
circle of orange lamplight and the shadowy Victorian
furniture beyond would dissolve into the Wild Wood or
Badger's warren and my grandmother's voice might have been
the sound of the River by which the animals lived. But while
I recalled clearly the spell cast by the words, I recalled
very little of the words themselves.

So I decided to read the story again -- or rather
to read it for myself for the first time -- a perilous
undertaking after nearly 45 years. I was not disappointed.
My grandmother's comforting voice has been stilled
for twenty years and her cozy living room long-since
remodeled by strangers. But Grahame's words still held the
magic that had touched me so long ago.

There are the gorgeous descriptions of river,
fields and woods in all their changing aspects throughout
the seasons, creating a vivid, irresistible world. And of
course the appealing characters, all save for some nefarious
denizens of the Wild Wood, as friendly and caring a group
as any child could wish, but with enough quirks and
peccadilloes, from Badger's anti-social tendencies to Toad's
manic irresponsibility, to appear real, hardly a bunch of
boring do-gooders.

Then too, the book is mostly about home, the thing
best known and most important to a child. Ratty and Mole and
the rest are always safe in some lovingly described home, or
going home on a cold night, or thinking about being at home
in their own warm beds. Which is probably why it is so
horrifying when Toad arrives back from his adventures to
find Toad Hall occupied by weasels and stoats.

This is one of many harrowing scenes. Losing one's
home, or being lost in the dark woods on a cold night as
happens to Mole, or having one's freedom taken, a fate
suffered by Toad when he is thrown in prison for stealing a
motorcar, are not trivial matters. The fears they stir are
deep, so THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS makes for exciting reading.

Grahame's world is not only filled with real
danger, but with mystery. The Wild Woods and the far off
Wide World both harbor things unknown. In one chapter Mole
and Ratty encounter the god Pan, who strikes the memory from
their minds. As children, like Grahame's animals, we
readily accept our strange and contradictory state,
creatures seeking mundane physical comforts, some cozy den,
in a limitless universe full of mysteries and wonders beyond
our comprehension. But as we grow older we too often take
the comforts for granted and forget that the wonders exist.
I think it might be Grahame's mingling of domesticity and
awe that makes THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS a classic. Then
again, trying to explain the book like that makes me wonder
if I haven't just caught some of Mr. Toad's overwhelming
conceit.

Mary's Favorite: LITTLE WOMEN

When strings of street lights sprang up in yellowish
necklaces dotting along the busy roads and another sooty
night began to fall upon Newcastle-on-Tyne, my sister and I
would go up to our attic bedroom and draw curtains patterned
with castles, ships and jesters with curly-toed shoes to
shut out a darkening urban landscape of slate-roofed
dwellings marching down in regular lines to the river.
Ungraced by gardens or trees or any growing thing except
whatever took root in the cemetery at the top of our street
or on bomb-sites left uncleared for years after the war,
those long grey terraces of houses stretched away out of
sight in all directions, sheltering the inhabitants of the
northern English industrial city known proverbially for its
coal, not to mention shipyards and factories that in those
days rang with the noise of machinery around the clock.

As bed-time approached we'd read for a while before
the light was put out -- and for a lot longer afterwards by
torchlight under the covers. Books aplenty were available to
us between the city's free libraries and Christmas or
birthday gifts, for we always received a book to mark each
occasion. So it was that at about l2 or l3 I discovered
Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN, and later on her other
novels about the March sisters' adult lives.

One thing about LITTLE WOMEN was rather puzzling.
Like us, they lived in financially straitened circumstances
and yet had a servant, Hannah, who had been with them for
years. As a daughter of the working class, this seemed very
strange to me, the more so as my mother had been a parlour
maid and the notion of us having a servant was so alien as
to be unthinkable, despite the fact that I was always being
told that I had too much imagination. One of my favourite
scenes is Beth's reaction to the beautiful piano given to
her by elderly Mr Laurence, for her expression upon seeing
it must surely have been the same as that displayed by my
musically gifted sister when our parents managed to get hold
of a second-hand upright piano for her. This piano
subsequently lived in our scullery next to the copper where
the original tenants boiled up their washing, our street and
those surrounding it having been built for industrial and
pit workers when Queen Victoria still ruled. Graced with
high ceilings, picture rails and ornate iron fireplaces,
they are now sold for fabulous sums as artisans' dwellings.
When we lived there, there was still a working gas light in
our bedroom but the entire place was also extremely damp and
the only plumbing was a cold tap in the scullery, the
necessary offices being in the back yard -- about as far as
you can get from the brown stone March house which, although
old and a little shabby, had a garden with roses and vines
and stood on a quiet street in the suburbs.

Yet as thousands of readers from numerous countries
living in all sorts of housing have discovered, there is
much emotional common ground with this delightful tale of a
family's ups and downs and its tears and triumphs. I loved
LITTLE WOMEN the first time I read it and every year or so I
re-read it. The four March sisters -- gentle and ailing
Beth, artistic but vain Amy, quiet, dependable Meg and the
tomboy bookworm Jo -- have become old friends. We see them
shepherded by Marmee while their father, not strong enough
to soldier and too old to be drafted, serves as a chaplain
in the Civil War. Then there's their dashing next door
neighbour Laurie, his grandfather Mr Laurence, Laurie's
tutor John Brooke, the girls' rich but demanding Aunt March
with her huge library and disrespectful parrot, plus a bevy
of supporting characters, most of them types familiar to us
all. Time has made LITTLE WOMEN as familiar and comfortable
as a favourite pair of slippers, while that strong sense of
the March family's love and emotional support for each other
remains as striking as the first time I opened the book and
began reading.

It is Jo, generous and good hearted although hasty
in her speech until she learns patience, who has always been
my favourite of the four sisters. She is the only character
with whom I have ever identified and as a youngster I firmly
declared that like her I was going to be a writer and
furthermore intended to live in a garret. In fact, I said it
so many times that it became family legend, one of those
humourous stories trotted out whenever we'd gather for
celebrations, like the saga of when my brother-in-law lost
me at a tender age in the London Tube system.

Now, years later, I live far away from Newcastle-on-
Tyne. But I still have my battered old copy of LITTLE WOMEN
and I did finally achieve that long-held ambition -- only I
scriven in a basement rather than a garret!